NYTimes.com – German Law Would Limit Facebook’s Use in Hiring

As part of the draft of a law governing workplace privacy, the German government on Wednesday proposed placing restrictions on employers who want to use Facebook profiles when recruiting.

The bill would allow managers to search for publicly accessible information about prospective employees on the Web and to view their pages on job networking sites, like LinkedIn or Xing. But it would draw the line at purely social networking sites like Facebook, said Philipp Spauschus, a spokesman for the Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière.

via NYTimes.com – German Law Would Limit Facebook’s Use in Hiring. I have to admit to liking this idea. It’s very reasonable, limit companies from using sites that are designed to be part of a person’s life outside of work. Although the larger question becomes what is a “purely social networking site”, does Twitter count, etc and who defines it. Overall the better result is for people to be more intelligent or more aware about what information is public.

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